"Michael Knowlton coaxes characters out of his daydreams and watches with delight as a cast of temperamental clowns, dwarves, chimpanzees and strippers march forth. Clowns play nasty tricks and then turn into harmless jesters. Next, they become benevolent sages pointing out society’s hypocrisy. Dwarves symbolize ill-bred, overfed humans bent on self-destruction and in the next canvas they become the hapless victims of a meaner world. Disco girls dance to a magic beat, whipping up the flames of an eternal bonfire.
. Piles of junk cars pay simultaneous tribute to Monet’s haystacks and 1950’s car culture. What began as a nostalgic vision of old cars has turned dark in color and theme. His landscapes are nightmares of industrial wasteland. Like Piranesi’s prisons, they possess a strange and compelling beauty. These scenes have become the stage sets for armies of wild characters who act out their drams of avarice and lust.
Several of his paintings are bordered by totemic columns that reinforce his trademark motifs - - oil cans and go-go girls. Knowlton frequently explores his subject through dichotomies, as in Poodle and Manx. The prissy poodle is overfed and spoiled while the alert and intuitive Manx cat embodies pure nature, burning brightly like Blake’s Tyger. They and the other creatures bob in and out of the paintings, resurfacing, once kind, then cruel, like us. Knowlton understands that it takes the laugh of a clown to live in the darkness of the world."
By John Gunnin
Juxtapoz Magazine
OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS
Orange County Weekly, September 14, 2001, Review.
The Channel, Art Beat, August 1999, Review.
San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1999. Reproduction.
Point Reyes Light, August 12, 1999, Reproduction.
Marin Independent Journal, May 13 1999, Feature story.
Point Reyes Light, May 13, 1999, Reproduction.
Venice Magazine, March, 1999, Reproduction.
Surfer Magazine, September, 1997, Reproduction
Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1996, Reproduction.
Point Reyes Light, May 23, 1996, Review.
JUXTAPOZ, summer, 1995, Feature story with reproductions.
Surfer's Journal, spring, 1994, Feature story with reproductions.
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28, 1993, Cathy Curtis, Review, Reproduction.
MOCA Contemporaries, spring, 1992, Anthony Rubenstein, Review.
Point Reyes Light, June 18, 1992, Reproduction.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 6, 1987, Dorothy Burkhart, Review.
San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1987, Al Morch, Review.
San Francisco Examiner, June 29, 1986, Image Magazine, Reproduction.
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